We've seen how Lego's boy and girl commercials seem intent on keeping the genders separate from childhood, but what about the rest of the toy world? What happens when, for instance, you play G.I. Joe's bone-crunching heavy metal toy commercial music in a video of Barbie trying on her latest swimsuit? Total and utter gender-warping insanity. If you prefer to keep your toys gender discrete thank you very much, don't visit the HTML5 Gendered Ad Remixer and listen to how imperative it seems to toymakers that young boys become war-crazed super soldiers and young girls become budding fashionistas or responsible mothers.

We've been talking a lot about Lego Friends, the new Legos for girls that, while remarkably…
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Words to look out for in the commercials aimed at girls are "cuddly" (that's a big one) and "friend." Everyone's a friend in Polly Pocket or Barbie commercials. Have your friends come over and comb Barbie's hair or let your friends see how responsible a guardian for that infant doll you are. Boys, at least according to toy makers, have no friends, only adversaries that they must maim with a Nerf gun in order to maintain supremacy over the post-apocalyptic environment they're wrangling over, which sounds like a pretty awful playdate.